SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A recent report by Apartment List says it’s getting tougher to find a place to rent in the Sacramento and Stockton areas. Prices are skyrocketing as more people look to move in from out of the area.
ABC10’s Dollars and Sense team asked our Facebook audience how hard it is to rent an affordable apartment these days.
Rosemary put it most simply with her response: “Very hard.” Richard said it depends on how picky you are. And Vanessa told us rent is “crazy pricey, even for a two bedroom…” and that when a place does come up, “you have to fight 50 or more applicants.”
Igor Popov, the Chief Economist for Apartment List says Vanessa isn’t imagining the higher prices.
“Sacramento, we've seen rents climb 12%, year over year, it's even bigger in Stockton. It's also gone up really quickly in some of the suburbs around Sacramento, as well," Popov said. "So, even though the ‘California exodus’ was a bit of a myth, and a lot of parts of the country complain about people from the Bay Area moving to their city and jacking up rent prices, in Sacramento I think it's actually true. We're seeing a lot of rental searches come from San Jose, from San Francisco, to basically going up [Interstate] 80 to Sacramento, to Roseville.”
Popov says a lot of that is due to new options in how we work.
“They're bringing big budgets along with them, and that's really contributing to some of the heat that we're seeing in rents," Popov said. “Remote work is still having a big effect as the market sorts itself out. We're seeing a record number of apartment rental searches throughout the country, but I think Sacramento is feeling a lot of the heat from this new market.”
Another contributing factor? People looking to buy are having a tough time finding a home to purchase.
“Even though there is a lot of demand for people to buy their first home and rates are low, the inventory just isn't there," Popov said. "We're seeing record low inventory in the ‘for sale’ market. It is hard to buy a single-family home right now, and so more people are being kept in the rental market for longer."
Popov says finding rentals may get easier as peak moving season ends and school starts, but things won’t change much price-wise.
“We shouldn't expect reversion or falling rents, you know, rents in San Sacramento have been growing pre-pandemic," Popov said. "They took a bit of a hit during the shelter in place era, but then quickly bounced back. There's no reason to see falling rents, but I think some of the difficulty in finding available apartments, that will sort itself out as the market does in the next six months or so.”
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